Motherhood Makeover !

When I was single, I thought my life couldn’t be better. And then, I got married. Then I thought oh it’s not that bad…its good atleast until a kid comes into picture. And then the kid came. And I am still the same with a few teeny tiny details changed.

• I hear myself telling the beautician that I’m unable to book a prior appointment, and my arrival depends on the mood of the baby and availability of my husband.

• I find myself in a rocking motion even when I am not holding the baby.

• Soaps and shampoos do not form lather on my hair or skin as they are washed off before that. I wonder what I did during my forty minute bath before. And what a lather looks like.

• Hormonal imbalances took half of my hair, and the rest were uprooted by my baby.

• At malls I make mental guesses of the age in months of any babies I see around and compare them with my own.

• I browse through babycenter as much as facebook and twitter.

• My mobile reminders consist of vaccination dates.

• I've given strict instructions to everyone in the house to talk in hushed tones when the baby is asleep.

• That guy who honks in front of our house exactly when the baby is sleeping is going to hell .

• My maid is trained to treat vessels like flowers so that no noise comes out of the kitchen.

• Packets with plastic covers which need to be opened while the baby is asleep either has to wait or will be opened outside the apartment.

• If the shoe polish is not found around in the last minute, baby wipes will be used. 

• If I meet anyone who has a baby the first thing I check with them would be about the pediatrician they consult, or about the reputation of ours.

• I started folding our clothes to form small squared lumps so that they fit in the corner allotted to me and hubby. The rest of the wardrobe belongs to the baby.

• I have stopped wearing watch, bangles or bracelets for the fear of hurting my baby as I hold him.

• I have also stopped wearing long earrings as when I wear them my baby thinks they are hoops to which he can hang on.

• I sleep at the edge of the bed. In fact I am almost hanging from the edge of my bed.

• I make international calls to my friends I've known since primary school and end up discussing about feeding bottles and baby utensils.

• I call my parents only to narrate what my baby did that day, as no one wants to know about me.

• In photographs people seem to see only the baby. To my parents I am invisible ever since he was born.

• I cant remember what the hell I used to talk with my close friends before.

• I have a baby poop stain in all my tops and tees in the washing machine.

• I sigh aloud seeing prices of bibs.

• I shop more at mothercare  than lifestyle.

• There isn’t any furniture in the house on which there is no hand sanitizer.

• If someone advices me about infant food or medicine, I reply quoting from WHO guidelines to infant feeding and supplements.

Oh now coming to think of it, these are not teeny tiny details. It’s a huge makeover ! I deserve a relaxing holiday. I need to get a  break. I should remember to discuss a vacation with my friends next time I call them. Wait. Don’t I have to check with them about baby walker? Wonder whether they bought it. Or is it time to get my baby one. Where is the phone. I will ask her right away. Ohh what was the other thing I wanted to discuss?

The Super Drama Family !

My parents were the top favorites of the strictest nuns and teachers at my school.

Some teachers acted like their main concern was to see whether I wore the uniform  tie around my neck or not. I hated the tie . Just like I hate seat belts. So, my tie rested peacefully cuddled within the comfort of my skirt pocket. Unable to stand it any longer, one day I went  home with a note in my school diary saying,

 ‘Dear parents, 

Your ward, Anita Jeyan, does not comply with the rules and discipline of the school. As you can find in Page 9 , Column I, paragraph 3, point two of the school diary, all students are expected to wear the uniform tie while they are within the school premises . However your ward has repeatedly violated the rules despite warnings. I request you to either sign this note or come to the school to have a word with her class teacher’.

Signing the diary hardly took five seconds. But Noo…Papa took the longest route – he came to school promptly the very next day. He doesn’t believe in signing diaries or letting me go. He had to ride the ancient, creaky scooter all the way to the school, drag me along, almost pin me on the wall, gang around me with the teachers and throw dart arrows at me. Then he rode atleast 30km to his office in the hot morning sun. And when he arrived, they came running to him with complaints ranging from socks not pulled up – not wearing the right pair – wore nail polish – turned around and talked to a friend during the national anthem type of silly, unreasonable complaints with an expression as grave as if I took drugs or something. And I stand there, inspecting my nails, or the lizard on the ceiling, with a sheepish expression. Mostly I’d be tediously gulping down laughter wondering how jobless must be these people to be discussing intently about my socks on the prime working hours of a productive day. The note in the diary was not worth it you see. Papa could’ve just signed the page and saved the day.

That’s not all, buddies. There was an open house day at school, which was the most dreaded, and the most awaited day for me and my parents respectively. It was the day the parents were allowed to see the term exam answer sheets. My parents came equipped with all the question papers, pinned and sorted by date and sat down with the corresponding answer sheets in classroom.  What followed was at least an hour of brickbats and I skillfully wore three dresses to shield my thighs from the occasional pinching that most pages of my answer sheet triggered. Most parents of all my friends were more or less the same – they were on the teacher’s side – but very few pinched their wards on the venue of open house - for them the pinching waited until they got home.

But there was this girl, Ms.K,  whose parents came to school to sing praises about her- Who’d  yell at the teachers for reducing her marks for spelling mistakes - Who wouldn’t let her travel in school buses or vans - Who waited outside the school chanting prayers as she wrote exams.

Our school had this policy that the students were allowed to wear color dress on one day of every academic year, and that was for Christmas party. On that day, we ate, drank (frooti of course) , danced, sang, commented on each others dresses, talked, screamed and did everything which we were usually yelled at for doing inside the classroom. Then we had make-believe fashion shows, mostly comical, and based on popular interest we chose a class beauty. Every year. So when I was in my seventh grade, one of my friends was chosen as the class beauty, and we all lauded and celebrated that by making a lot of noise. However, K was of the impression that she would be the class beauty that year and started crying while the other girl was chosen. Noone could console K. She cried so much that her eyes became red, cheeks swollen, much to the amusement of my friends and myself. Oh how she took this class beauty thing seriously! We slowly came out of the classroom and laughed our lungs out, went inside as if nothing happened and enjoyed every moment she cried. Sorry if I sound like a sadist but this girl was unbelievably silly.

Soon after, my friends and I walked to the shop just outside the school with permission and fund from the teacher to buy sip-up for the whole class where we met K’s parents eagerly waiting for her. I really wonder what their source of income was. May be someone paid them for waiting there all day. Seeing us, her mother asked, ‘How is the party…whats K doing?’ Then we all replied in unison that K cried because she wasn’t crowned the class beauty and few of us smirked sarcastically. Her mother looked like she was going to pass out. Then we went our way back to school.

As soon as the bell rang, K snatched her pink bag, which by the way no one is allowed to touch or even look, and ran outside after banging the classroom door in total disgust. Few minutes later, regaining our composure after laughing our heads off, my friend and me walked to the school gate where K waited with the pink bag, her parents by her side. K looked like she was using her pink bag as a weapon for a war against the bulls that were running at her. Her mother rolled eyes at us. We almost walked past them, when K said ‘ Wait’ , in a filmy bass and tone. The drama family looked at us fuming with anger. And her father spoke. “ Who told you girls that K cried  ? “ We looked at each other and at K, who was now all composed and confident. We mumbled..’Err…uncle… actually’… and he roared ‘Don’t you dare talk nonsense about K !’ We mumble again…’But….the….’ But K and the drama King and Queen already strode off into their luxurious Maruti 800 car and vroomed past us leaving a cloud of smoke and confusion.

We weren’t able to speak for the next few seconds. We then looked at each other in sheer disbelief and then burst into peals of laughter.

This incident, which then did rounds at school in various versions created a brilliant sucker image for K , which she rightly deserved.

 Her self-assumed super-model display picture on gtalk makes my day :D

Dubai Chronicles.

I’m back to my space after a five day trip to Dubai. Of course after much convincing and making a zillion promises to parents. 

Our five month old kiddo was not interested in outdoor trips, which we learnt the hard way. So all other outdoor ideas were cancelled and we stuck on to what I like the most. The malls. 

The magnificent malls of Dubai which makes one go wide mouthed. The malls which would make you run to edit your location preference in the resume at naukri. The malls which are huge and run in kilometers but never makes you tired. The malls which are the houses of worship for every shopaholic. The malls which raises the spirits of every child. The malls which are the nightmares of every husband.

About Dubai – It’s the land of the decent Malayali. The majority of arrogant, perverse, excessive spitters of Kerala are all gentlemen in Dubai. They undergo a makeover in the three hour flight, I guess. But at malls and other tourist attractions they sometimes go overboard so much that the actual Malayali pops out of the thin layers of fake decorum. Some of them got fashionable overnight, ripped off their shiny, sequence stuck salwars, crawled into tee shirt and jeans and walked straight into the malls. However they forgot to undo the oil plait, the dot on the forehead and jewellery. Now that’s why Dubai calls them -  Typical Mallus ! It is such a pleasure to watch them search for dustbins to dispose the empty package of cheese chips, because back in Kerala, it usually lands on the road, or floats in the air only to land on your face, that is, if you are very lucky.

Anyway, there was this one incident which came as a huge surprise to us. As we walked on, our kiddo showed signs of a diaper change and we stopped for one. I walked into the baby room, when hubby temporarily sat on a wooden bench where few others were also resting their butts. As I came out, I saw a middle aged couple sitting next to where our bags were, with a baby that looked like a doll. Size wise. Not exaggerating here, but considering the texture of the skin of this baby, it could have been hardly five to ten days old. And it was not more than 1 kg heavy. Looked more like a premature baby. I’m sorry I had addressed the baby as ‘it’, but its hard to say ‘he’ or ‘she’ considering the size. The baby was all red and the usual Dubai trend of not staring or poking into others business stopped to take a look and pity this one. The baby was fast asleep (well what else can it do at a mall) and the parents trying their best to avoid  the ‘why the bloody hell cant you stay at home’ looks that came daggering into their fake conversation like arrows. 

Its their baby, their business. Who am I to discuss about it, right ? But I still cant stop wondering, why did they bring a baby as tiny as that, whose immunity wouldn’t have even formed, into a mall which in a baby world would rather be a pool of viruses ? Why, oh, why ? To check out fall/winter collection at mothercare?

People are different, so are cultures and customs. I am young, haven’t seen the world and am barely the one to comment, but I seriously doubt whether there will be any community in the world which will support them.

Baby, I feel so sorry for your ridiculously ignorant parents, and I hope you don’t catch any germs from here. Stay safe. Take care.

Mobile Appointments.

My first mobile phone was a Nokia 1100. It had a white moonlight display and was gifted by Papa in my final semester of engineering, as he was overwhelmed by my marks in the seventh semester. Haha I wish !  The truth is, there were only two theory papers and a project in the final semester. The project demanded frequent shuttling between hostel, printing press and computer center, and the gadget helped him trace me.

After six tiresome and frustrating months of job hunting after graduation, I landed at a software firm as a trainee and started earning on my own. My first investment was a mobile phone (which is hardly an investment ) worth twice my trainee pay. I spent my entire salary of that month and a monetary donation from Mummy to buy it and flaunted it around for almost three years. That’s when I got married and ever since I’d been using my husband's discarded phones.

Okay I am not trying to be the super modest wife here because the very infamous nagging also happened in parallel. Whenever I shop for clothes or shoes, my excuse would be…’See this? I don’t even have a mobile..This is your old one. Poor me .’ and it always worked. Last month he bought me a new mobile, the most happening Android. ( Ya I know what an Android is, he explained it to me.)

Ever since, our appointments and reminders happen as follows.

Our son has to be taken to the Clinic for his third dose of vaccination on December 7^th. I create a reminder in my calendar and add  hubby’s name as the participant. As soon as I create, it sends an email to my hubby with the attached calendar , which looks somewhat like this:

Event: Aaron vaccination.

Date: 7^th December 2011.

Location: Muscat Clinic

Participants: Anita Jeyan

Going? Options: Yes  No  May Be

Then he clicks ‘Yes’.

Immediately this is added to his calendar as well, and I get an email saying ‘Accepted’.

Aren’t we the super hifi Gizmo freak couple or what ?  So the calendar became our Godfather reminding us for Sunday Mass, Grocery purchase, Car servicing, ATM, etc.

Later one day I reported a dearth of clothes in my wardrobe and wanted to go shopping.

 As usual I created the event on my calendar.

Event: Shopping.

Date: 3rd November 2011.

Location: City Center.

Participants: Anita Jeyan

An email pops up in his inbox.

He notes the undesirable event.

The mail continues.

Going? Options: Yes  No  May Be

May Be.

My email reads: ‘Tentatively Accepted”. L